Chapter 9 - THE PATERNITY TEST WAS A WEAPON
Matthias heard her from the hallway.
He walked into the room without permission.
“What did she say?”
I looked at him.
“You heard.”
His face had gone white.
“Serena?”
The pain of his suspicion was almost funny.
After Fiona.
After the hotel.
After the necklace.
After months of lies.
He still looked at me as if I were the one standing trial.
“The baby is yours.”
“Then what document?”
Nathan was already checking his email.
A laboratory report had been sent to Dre family board members.
Prenatal paternity test.
Probability of Matthias Dre’s paternity:
0.00%.
Matthias gripped the bed rail.
I stared at the page.
“I never took this test.”
Nathan examined the identifiers.
The maternal blood sample was supposedly mine.
Collected six weeks earlier.
Then I remembered.
My routine glucose screening.
Blood had been drawn at my obstetrician’s office.
Someone had accessed my sample.
Matthias whispered, “Could the result be real?”
I looked at him for a long time.
“No.”
He lowered his eyes.
“Sorry.”
“You should be.”
Nathan called the laboratory.
The report was genuine in format but generated through a private test ordered by Claire Harlan.
The paternal sample did not come from Matthias.
It came from someone else.
Fraud disguised as science.
Why?
Control.
If Matthias believed the child was not his, Claire wanted him to disavow paternity before birth.
That could destroy the guardianship chain.
Create litigation.
Freeze the trust.
Possibly force settlement leverage.
“Claire wants everyone fighting while she moves money,” Nathan said.
Gregory agreed.
Then Matthias’s phone vibrated.
A message from Claire.
ASK YOUR FATHER WHOSE DNA I USED.
Matthias looked at Evelyn.
Then Gregory.
Neither knew.
Conrad was still missing.
Federal agents located his car abandoned near Stamford Harbor.
Inside was blood.
Not much.
No body.
Then Claire sent another file.
An old birth certificate.
A baby boy born thirty-eight years earlier.
Mother: Evelyn Dre.
Father: blank.
Date of birth matched Matthias exactly.
Matthias stared.
His parents had always told him Conrad was his biological father.
Evelyn began crying.
“Mom?”
She closed her eyes.
“Conrad adopted you when you were eleven months old.”
Matthias staggered backward.
“Who is my father?”
Evelyn looked at Gregory Vale.
Fiona gasped.
I stared.
Gregory looked devastated.
“No.”
Evelyn answered anyway.
“Gregory.”
Silence filled the hospital room.
Matthias and Fiona turned toward each other.
The affair suddenly became horrifying.
Gregory reacted instantly.
“That’s impossible.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“You were drunk. It was one night. Before you married Fiona’s mother.”
Fiona backed away from Matthias.
“No.”
Nathan asked the obvious question.
“Is Fiona Gregory’s biological daughter?”
Gregory stared at her.
“Yes.”
Fiona ran from the room.
Matthias followed, then stopped himself.
He looked physically sick.
Their affair had unknowingly been between half-siblings.
Claire knew.
That was why she had encouraged Fiona’s access to Matthias.
Not merely to gather information.
She wanted maximum destruction.
Then Nathan looked again at the fraudulent paternity test.
“If Claire used Gregory’s DNA as the paternal comparison…”
I understood.
Because Matthias was Gregory’s son, related DNA could create deliberately confusing results if manipulated.
Claire was not just attacking money.
She was dismantling the family psychologically.
My daughter’s heartbeat stabilized.
But my marriage did not.
And before sunrise, investigators found Conrad Dre.
Alive.
Locked inside the trunk of an abandoned vehicle.
His first words after rescue were not about Claire.
He grabbed an agent’s sleeve and said:
May you like
“Claire isn’t Gregory’s daughter.”
“She’s mine.”
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